With increasing numbers of voice services and voice messaging systems, a session of interaction about a single topic (e.g., scheduling a contractor's service, following up on a financial transaction, customer service inquiry, etc.) may span over multiple phone calls, voice messages, fax transmissions, instant messages, emails and the like, through different phone numbers and/or email addresses (e.g., office phone, home phone, mobile phone, business email, private email, fax, instant messaging, etc.) over an extended period of time. However, unlike email replies, which may efficiently maintain and present threads of correspondences, phone replies lack that capability.
Hence, it becomes burdensome to follow up on a thread, which may comprise multiple live conversations, emails, faxes, and instant messages, in order to figure out the order in which they were placed and the current state of the conversation. One example includes multiple phone calls made to customer service regarding a specific product/service/issue, which may include phone calls related to placing an order, following up on payment, and checking the status of shipping and delivery of the order. Modem call-receiving systems may maintain audio records of all calls, linked to a customer's record and/or to a service ticket. Often times these call-receiving systems require the customer to remember and reference a customer number, a case number or a ticket/docket number in order to retrieve the thread information. This method puts a burden on the customer to provide such a number (when prompted) in order for the call-center operator to be able to access the customer's record and/or service ticket, if such records are maintained by the call-receiving system.
Furthermore, today's technology often requires the customer to authenticate to the system (e.g., by entering an account number as well as a zip code or the last four digits of a social security number), each time he or she engages in a phone conversation, before the thread may be safely retrieved and any progress may be made.
Hence, there is a need for a method to automatically label, maintain, synchronize, summarize, display, and trace back threads consisting of phone calls, email, faxes, instant messages, and the like, and to carry authentication information throughout the communication thread.